Questioning and Overthinking

Let's be honest, I'm an overthinker. Life is such a strange thing. I can't help but pick it apart, find all the inconsistencies, oddities, imperfections, and try to figure it all out. Of course that's ridiculous, because it's impossible to figure life out. I also spend time in awe of the universe and all of reality and how it all exists. I thrive on thinking about these things.

Sometimes I believe my thoughts are good and meaningful, at least I choose to believe that. Many times I know my thoughts are a burden and my overthinking prevents me from doing many things. Let's take this blog, for instance. I created it years ago, as a way to share many of the things on my mind. But I could never actually start it.

How can I possibly put my thoughts to words? Why would anyone want to read them anyway? What if my thoughts are actually trash? I rarely share my thoughts an opinions with others so how can I know they have any basis in fact or reality? I'm not a good writer, so I need time to make the posts perfect. I'm not really experienced in any of the topics I think about so what gives me the right to even talk about them on a public forum? Doing research on topics would be best and there are already so many better writers, creators and thinkers out there. I just shouldn't even bother.

These are among the thoughts that have prevented me from doing this blog. And that's just a small chunk of my overthinking. As I already mentioned, life is weird and imperfect, but it's also extremely complex. It bothers me that our language and popular viewpoints focus on black and white perspectives, assuming life is straight forward. But it's not.

Every aspect of life, no matter what is, has complexity. Many things seem simple, yet aren't. A person murders another; try them in court; send them to jail; simple, right?. But why did he commit murder; what events in his life lead up to that choice? What cultural or environmental aspects influenced their life choice? Is this person evil? Or is this person another human who made a bad choice?

If you asked all humans on earth the question, "are you a good person?", you would not find very many who would answer negatively. All humans have capacity for good and capacity for evil and everything in between. This is just one thing that makes life so complex. So many factors influence who we are and the choices we make. We can stand from a distance and label someone we don't know as "evil" or "good". But if someone you are close to, who you love and care about, makes a bad decision, perhaps even a decision to kill... do you think of them as evil? Perhaps you do, but are you not more likely to think of them as a complex person and empathize?

I could go on forever, but this topic warrants it's own blog post, or perhaps it's own book. I'm sure many better than I have commented on it. The point I want to make here with my first post is that life is complex and some time ago, in my teenage years I began questioning everything about life. I began questioning everything I took for granted and thought to "normal", "right" and "universal". Questioning, and also overthinking, became who I am today.

This questioning and thinking about life is not a journey with any destination. My thoughts and opinions and knowledge have all evolved so much in the past 20 years and I will continue to evolve. I hope I never stop questioning. Some people would say that I'm indecisive. I've been accused of that for much of my life. Some people would say you can't live your life in the middle and must choose a side. Some people might say that questioning is bad. I disagree on all accounts.

As humans I believe we must question everything that we know. Just because we question something, doesn't mean that we reject it. I often question why the heck humans wear clothing in the first place. I can explore the positives and negatives to our evolution to being hairless and needing clothing. But just because I find it strange that we're the only animal on earth that wears clothing and has a concept of "nakedness" does not mean that I'm a nudist and reject clothing in my daily life. Certainly there are people that do. But I can question things like this on a daily basis and still come to a decision to live in a certain way for many different reasons. I wear clothing because it's culturally acceptable and I wish to keep and maintain a job in a professional community and I like making money and having a place to live, etc.

Again that topic could be a whole blog post in itself, and I will perhaps explore that at some point. That example of questioning is a bit unimportant in the grad scale of life. But the type of questioning that is most important is concerning what we believe, what we follow, and how we act. Religion? Politics (yuck)? Morality? These things and so much more we must question on a daily basis. And we can't just question things at the surface. We must dig deep in the roots of why we believe and act what we do, we must question everything that we think we know about ourselves, humanity and the universe. And even then we will never find all the answers that we desire. But finding the answers is not really the goal, even if we desire to have answers. The true goal is to find better questions. And I also argue the true goal is to be better humans to ourselves, to each other, and to our universe.

So this blog is my journey of many thoughts. I don't claim to be an expert on anything in the blog, nor do I claim to think I have the answers or that I am "right." I only hope to ask important questions and if anyone actually reads this, maybe I will inspire questions and meaningful conversation with others.